Daily News: Thursday 12/7/17

Alas, the dearth of automotive news continues, proving we are almost certainly in the ‘off-season’:

Honda’s F1 Engine Chief is ‘Reassigned’

From Road & Track:

“Yusuke Hasegawa has been the head of Honda’s F1 project, a job he took over from Yasuhisa Arai, since 2016. It hasn’t gone well, with engine failures and lack of pace leaving McLaren at the back of the grid, a place that it’s not familiar with. The lack of pace and reliability caused McLaren to exit its contract with Honda a year early, with Toro Rosso picking up the contract.

Now there’s been a major shuffle within Honda and Hasegawa will be reassigned within the company as of January 1st, totally off of the F1 program.

Instead, Hasegawa’s role will be split in two, with Toyoharu Tanabe taking on the position of F1 technical director and, though Honda hasn’t named anyone yet, it’s expected that Yasuaki Asaki will be the new operating officer in charge of development.

Splitting the job in two means that Tanabe will be in charge of the team on the ground at races and tests while Asaki would be responsible for development at the factory. Honda believes this will allow them to work better and faster. Hopefully it also makes them quicker on track.”